Theatre

Review: Vertigo's Deathtrap a dead-on thriller

There is still a great deal of spring and snap in Deathtrap, Ira Levin’s 40-year-old stage thriller and Vertigo Theatre has graced it with a crackerjack production.

Deathtrap is the story of Sidney Bruhl, a one-hit wonder thriller playwright looking to recapture his moment of glory and the cash it brought with it.

For too many years now, Sidney has been living off his wife Myra’s fortune but that has all but run out given the extravagant lifestyle they’ve lived.

On the day we meet Sidney (Mark Bellamy) and Myra (Barbara Gates Wilson) he is ranting because Clifford Anderson (Tyrell Crews) a student from his summer university writing course has sent Sydeny a dynamite stage thriller called Deathtrap.

In Sidney’s own words Deathtrap is a thriller worth killing for and it doesn’t take a master sleuth to guess who’ll be invited out to the Bruhl’s remote country home.

The lasting appeal in Deathtrap is that it’s so murderously clever and ferociously funny it doesn’t matter if you’ve seen a stage or film version of it already.

You’ll laugh and shudder and scream and squirm along with the people who are experiencing it for the first time.

It helps immensely that everything about Vertigo’s production from casting and direction to design is so dead on.

David Fraser’s set looks and performs as if it is entirely liveable even featuring a fireplace that tricks us into believing it’s burning all those unwanted papers.

Fraser has also crafted some most credible weapons to adorn the walls, some of which will be used before the final curtain. His lighting design, particularly during the obligatory storm sequence, sets the mood for some creepy thrills especially given Andrew Blizzard’s authentic sound design.

Director Jamie Dunsdon is to be applauded for her decision not to use blackouts between scenes especially in the first act preserving the tension and suspense. Instead, she has given the actors stage business that would normally be done by stage hands in the dark. It’s very effective as is her decision to play the heightened melodrama in Levin’s script. We know these are not real people in real situations so why not have as much fun with them and their situations as possible.

What really traps the audience in Vertigo’ Deathtrap are the performances.

All Levin’s wonderfully vicious dialogue for Sidney just comes trippingly off Bellamy’s tongue. It never sounds forced or artificial. This is the way the man thinks and speaks and Bellamy makes us believe in every devilish thing Sidney suggests and eventually does.

Crews initially plays Clifford as the wide-eyed innocent but there’s always a hint there’s more to this aspiring playwright than meets the eye. It’s such fun watching Crews peel away the layers of Clifford’s facades.

Wilson is not about to play second fiddle to her two male costars which is possible with the role of the wife. Watching the terror mount in her body language and voice as she begins to believe her husband might just kill for that script is as creepy as it is fun. The more Gates believes in Sidney’s machinations the more the audience does.

Levin has written a scene stealing. show stopping character named Helga Ten Dorp, a European psychic who has rented the cottage across the meadow from the Bruhl’s and Dundson has invited Karen Johnson-Diamond to inhabit her. That was a stroke of genius because Johnson-Diamond delivers the kind of scenery chewing, crowd-pleasing extravagance the play needs and she tops it all off with her Bride of Frankenstein hairdo in the final scene.